Charity Computers May Fuel Malware Wars
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The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued a regional emergency declaration for 17 states and Washington, D.C., to keep fuel supply lines open on May 9.[13] It was the largest cyberattack on an oil infrastructure target in the history of the United States.[2] The FBI and various media sources identified the criminal hacking group DarkSide as the responsible party.[14] The same group is believed to have stolen 100 gigabytes of data from company servers the day before the malware attack.[1]
Unlike most malware, Stuxnet does little harm to computers and networks that do not meet specific configuration requirements; "The attackers took great care to make sure that only their designated targets were hit ... It was a marksman's job."[62] While the worm is promiscuous, it makes itself inert if Siemens software is not found on infected computers, and contains safeguards to prevent each infected computer from spreading the worm to more than three others, and to erase itself on 24 June 2012.[39]
Stuxnet attacked Windows systems using an unprecedented four zero-day attacks (plus the CPLINK vulnerability and a vulnerability used by the Conficker worm[64]). It is initially spread using infected removable drives such as USB flash drives,[22][46] which contain Windows shortcut files to initiate executable code.[65] The worm then uses other exploits and techniques such as peer-to-peer remote procedure call (RPC) to infect and update other computers inside private networks that are not directly connected to the Internet.[66][67][68] The number of zero-day exploits used is unusual, as they are highly valued and malware creators do not typically make use of (and thus simultaneously make visible) four different zero-day exploits in the same worm.[24] Amongst these exploits were remote code execution on a computer with Printer Sharing enabled,[69] and the LNK/PIF vulnerability,[70] in which file execution is accomplished when an icon is viewed in Windows Explorer, negating the need for user interaction.[71] Stuxnet is unusually large at half a megabyte in size,[66] and written in several different programming languages (including C and C++) which is also irregular for malware.[16][21][63] The Windows component of the malware is promiscuous in that it spreads relatively quickly and indiscriminately.[46]
Assuming Iran exercises caution, Stuxnet is unlikely to destroy more centrifuges at the Natanz plant. Iran likely cleaned the malware from its control systems. To prevent re-infection, Iran will have to exercise special caution since so many computers in Iran contain Stuxnet.Although Stuxnet appears to be designed to destroy centrifuges at the Natanz facility, destruction was by no means total. Moreover, Stuxnet did not lower the production of low enriched uranium (LEU) during 2010. LEU quantities could have certainly been greater, and Stuxnet could be an important part of the reason why they did not increase significantly. Nonetheless, there remain important questions about why Stuxnet destroyed only 1,000 centrifuges. One observation is that it may be harder to destroy centrifuges by use of cyber attacks than often believed.[112] 2b1af7f3a8